In recent years, it has been the favored practice in steel mills to load steel coils, slabs, ingots, etc., on large, heavy-duty pallet stands and then lift and transport the loaded stands, often weighing 50 to 250 tons, by the use of special trucks with elevating platforms. Heretofore, it was common to load the steel articles by crane directly onto special expensive, heavy-duty trailers, but these were too frequently damaged during the loading operation and were costly to repair. The elevating transporters used with the pallet stands have been the type in which the entire vehicle body (frame, platform and cab) were elevated by hydraulic cylinders seated on multiple sets of steerable wheels which were driven by hydrostatic motors. Such a transporter is backed, with its platform in lowered position, beneath a loaded pallet stand, and then the platform is raised to lift the legs of the stand off the ground so that the loaded pallet stand can be carried by the transporter to the desired work or storage site where it is unloaded by lowering the platform and driving the transporter from beneath the stand. In this manner, a single transporter can be used to move multiple pallet stands. When very heavy loads are encountered, such as in steel mills and shipyards, an elevating transporter needs several wheel sets along its length to adequately spread the load. It has been the practice to use hydraulic motors to power the driven wheel. However, for safety reasons, in steel mills it is preferred because of the fire environment to minimize the use of equipment subject to possible oil spillage. Accordingly, vehicles with mechanical drives are preferred over vehicles driven by hydraulic motors since the oil pumped to the latter in substantial volume is under high pressure and is therefore likely to spray over a relatively wide area if one of the transfer hoses is ruptured or a hole fitting breaks. Mechanically driven vehicles are also commonly preferred over hydraulically driven vehicles because they are usually easier to trouble-shoot; i.e., a specialist is not needed on the maintenance staff for most trouble-shooting of mechanically driven vehicles, whereas a hydraulic specialist may be required for trouble-shooting of hydraulically driven vehicles, particularly when multiple sets of wheels are driven and steered hydraulically.